A Little Less Empty
by SLWalker
Summary: A Christmas crossover between MST3K and Knight Rider. And no, it is most certainly not a MSTing. Written for Serris and knightshade. Pairing is Joel and Bonnie.


_**A Little Less Empty**_

by: SLWatson

_Disclaimer: Joel, Mike, Tom and Crow belong to Best Brains, Inc. Bonnie, KITT, Devon and Michael belong to Glen A. Larson. I'm not making a profit._

_Notes: This was written as a Christmas gift to my sister, Karen (Serris), and to knightshade, who has always encouraged me. In order to read this, you've gotta ignore the fact that the MST3K crew has riffed on Knight Rider before and pretend like it never happened._

---

They had bumped into each other at a conference. A chance meeting. She was giving a lecture on Artificial Intelligence, sufficiently edited to make it seem as though AI had not been achieved yet in this world, and he was the guy sitting in the front of the auditorium smirking as though he knew something she didn't.

It had been a long time since Bonnie's world encompassed more than work. She buried herself in it; it was a safe place to hide from everything that had come crashing down years before. Focused intently upon lines of code, she could get away from the voices of the people she knew and loved and lost. That conference was one of the few breaks she had taken in years.

He had come up to the podium as she smiled pleasantly at well-wishers, his hands in his pockets, a strange smile playing across his face. She avoided speaking to him until she couldn't anymore, and with some of the fire of old, asked, "Is there something that you want?"

"I was just going to say that it was a pretty good lecture," he replied, seeming a little taken aback by her tone.

"Thanks." Bonnie picked up her briefcase and headed for the door, intending fully to leave it at that.

It didn't work. He followed, picking his pace up to match her strides. "You left out some parts, though. Artificial Intelligence isn't as far away as you made it seem like. In fact..." he paused there, then continued more carefully, "...it's probably a lot closer than anyone thinks."

She had heard this spiel before. Usually, though, she heard it from students; younger people who were starry-eyed and watched a lot of science fiction. "Probably," she agreed, keeping her tone neutral and hoping to shake him off.

He was persistent, however, and kept walking with her. Even when they made it outside into the late October air, he was still keeping pace. "I think everyone's kind of barking up the wrong tree, though. Like they keep thinking that the more complex they make the program, the more likely it'll take. But why not make the code simple? It's like life; you start out as a baby and grow. It's not complicated."

Bonnie paused on the steps, looking again at this man. It wasn't what he said, so much, as how he said it... there was a note of something familiar. Like sorrow, or longing, or something that he might not have even realized he was reflecting. She was a little off-guard. "That's an interesting theory..."

"Yeah. It just makes sense, y'know?" He kicked the toe of his tennis shoe against the top of the step, then gave her a smile. "Well, hey, thanks for talking with me. Maybe we'll run into each other at the next conference."

"Maybe." But she knew that she probably wouldn't do another one of these for a long time. It was, in all likelihood, the last time they would see each other.

She wondered why that thought bothered her.

--

It was, in fact, another year before they crossed paths again. She had nearly forgotten him, until she saw him sitting in the front row. Then she remembered. When he stepped up after the lecture, she actually gave him a smile this time. "You again."

"Yeah. I'm meeting a few people about selling an invention of mine and thought I'd listen in."

"It's the same thing as last time," she said, and shrugged. Once she was finished packing, she picked up her briefcase and started for the door. "Do you have a name?"

He nodded, following. "Joel."

"Bonnie."

"Nice to meet you." He chuckled, shoving his hands into his pockets. "Again."

They talked on the way out, mostly mindless chatter. He was from Minnesota; a restaurant manager who was looking to get into the ownership business. And a 'tinkerer', as he described himself. They touched briefly on the subject of AI again, and again he reflected her own feelings back to her in his eyes -- the sorrow, the longing.

"Do you have a phone number?" Bonnie asked, then shook her head at herself. She wasn't quite sure why she asked.

Joel wrote his number down, and didn't ask for hers in turn, and they parted ways with a semi-friendly wave.

---

She didn't call him. She didn't forget him, but she didn't call him either... at least, not within any normal timeframe. In fact, it took her nearly six months to bother to dial the number, and when she got his answering machine (which gave her three snappy one-liners, the time and the temperature) she left her own number and didn't expect to hear back.

He called her back an hour later. "Uhm, hey. Bonnie?"

"Hi Joel."

There was a long pause on his end of the line, then seemingly out of the blue, he asked, "Do you wanna go get a cup of coffee?"

She raised an eyebrow. "I'm in Boston."

"That's okay, it's doesn't have to be today. Just... next time we bump into each other."

She thought about it, then just figured 'why not?' "Sure."

---

When the offer to speak in Minneapolis came up, Bonnie took it. And after she was done speaking, she met Joel at a place called the Freighthouse; sitting at a quiet table, they made small talk about the weather, the conferences, the coffee.

She wasn't sure where the note of the conversation changed. It started off as talking on the surface, but as they began to talk more about where they had come from, something shifted and it became clear that they were speaking of more than the words would suggest.

It was Joel, though, who made the first real move. He took out a battered wallet, and pulled out an even more battered picture, offering it over.

It was dog-eared and beaten; carried and held many times over. In it were three mechanical things. And if it were anyone else but Bonnie, that's all they would have seemed like -- machines. But Bonnie, long adept to seeing the spark of life outside of the organic, could see that these three creatures were far more than the sum of their parts.

She studied the picture; a gold robot, with a basket behind its head and bright yellow-green eyes. A smaller red robot, hovering above the edge of the table. A big purple one with a single yellow eye. The picture made her feel something she hadn't felt in a very long time. "What are their names?" she asked, trying to keep her voice from quavering.

"The gold one's Crow T. Robot," Joel answered, his own voice a little tight with emotion. "The red one's Tom Servo, and the big purple one is Gypsy. And Cambot was taking the picture."

Bonnie nodded, running her fingers over the images... living creatures. "Where are they?"

"It's a long story," Joel just said, "but they're not here. I'm gonna find 'em again, though."

She just nodded again and pulled out her own photo. It was just as dog-eared, just as battered; held and carried and cried over. She handed it to him.

He took it and studied it for a long moment. And, like her, he could see life where no one else would. "Who...?"

"KITT. His name was KITT." It was so hard to say his name. "I don't know where he is, either... I've looked. For years. But I haven't found him."

Joel nodded, holding the picture gently. He didn't seem to know what else to say.

That was all right, though. Neither did she.

After a few long moments, both of them holding a piece of each other's lives and dreams and sorrows, they traded back their photos. Joel paid for the coffee, then walked her out to her car. They didn't say 'good-bye'.

---

The next time they met, two months later, they sat up all night in Bonnie's apartment and talked. Little by little, they revealed their stories. She told him a strange tale; he told her a tale that made hers look perfectly normal.

They talked about their AIs... in almost every sense, their children. Spoke of the first moments where life began. Spoke of the little, tiny, earth-shattering milestones. Crow's first abstract concepts; KITT's first display of emotion. They didn't talk about code, though, or programming, or algorithms... just moments in time, in life, in the lives of the beings that they had created.

Bonnie still didn't know who made the first move. It was after sunrise, and she had already called off work. She had walked him to the door, intending to try to sleep. And they stood for a very long time in the doorway of the apartment, not saying anything, just looking at one another.

At last, someone who understood.

At last, someone who felt that same emptiness.

At last, someone who made that emptiness just a little less empty.

When she woke up, it was afternoon and his arm was still around her and his breathing was soft against the back of her shoulder, and she tried to pretend that she regretted this... this one night stand with a man she only knew here and there. Except, she couldn't. It had been a long time since she'd even tried dating, and even longer since she felt like someone actually cared.

When he woke up, looking at her with sleepy blue eyes, she knew it was the same for him. They didn't do each other the disservice of pretending to be embarrassed, or the even greater disservice of pretending to be in love. He just took a shower, she made coffee, and after another long conversation at the kitchen table, he went to get on his flight home.

---

It went on like that for the next two years, off and on. Bonnie took any opportunity to get to Minnesota and the surrounding area; Joel took any opportunity to go to Boston and anywhere near there. So long as they were within three hours of each other, they met. Sometimes in his apartment, sometimes in hers, sometimes in a hotel along the roadside.

Sometimes they just spent hours talking, sometimes they didn't talk much at all.

Bonnie didn't love him. He was kind, and more careful with her feelings than she could have ever desired, but she didn't love him. And she knew that he didn't love her. They were using each other, honestly, but as they both understood that... it was fine. Far better to be good and kind and gentle with one another in this not-quite-relationship than live a lie.

When they weren't together, they kept up a good e-mail correspondence. He was on the other side of the screen when her mentor and friend died... the inspiration for KITT's voice. She was there when he found out that the Satellite of Love was going to self-destruct; she helped him plan a rescue, in fact, calling on MIT's resources.

She saw him one more time before he was due to launch, and if ever she came close to loving him, it was when she saw the excitement and hope on his face. It made her feel alive and light on her feet, and when she woke up in his bed, he was smiling in his sleep.

"You'll love 'em," he said, when he woke up, leaning his forehead against hers. "They're a handful, but you'll love 'em."

"I know," she replied, and she meant it.

---

She lost touch with him for months after that. His last e-mail said that he was going the next day, and she watched the news to make sure no one reported any unusual crashes. When they didn't, she went back to her life. She wondered, but she didn't worry... worrying did no good.

Finally, though, she received an e-mail.

_Bonnie,_

I have Tom and Crow. Gypsy and Cambot are safe and sound. Let me know when you'll be in the area.

Joel

She didn't get to Minnesota for another three months; actually, she was going to Chicago, but she made sure to leave early enough to make a side trip to the Twin Cities. As she walked up the snow-covered path to his apartment, she caught her first glimpse of Tom and Crow.

The two little 'bots were trying to build a snowman and insult each other at the same time. Crow bounded around on scrawny gold legs ("He was like a newborn deer the first time he tried to walk," Joel had once said) and Tom was pecking a face into the snowman's head with his beak.

She couldn't help but look at them, in awe, her heart aching and happy at the same time.

She couldn't help but love them.

"I see you met the 'bots," Joel said, coming to stand beside her, watching them play.

"Not yet," Bonnie murmured in answer, "but let them play. I can meet them later."

---

She did get to meet the 'bots, along with Joel's friend Mike, and spent an evening with them laughing and joking around and feeling as though she had reclaimed a tiny piece of what was lost so long before. And after the 'bots were tucked in, and Mike headed back to his own apartment, she sat and listened as Joel told her about everything that had happened... how he had left them up there when he'd gone up, but made up for it by saving them when the Satellite crashed, about how they had tried to take on NASA, about how life had just now become normal again.

And she listened and didn't judge. Then she told him what she had been up to... compared to his tale, her life was positively mundane. But he listened anyway, intently, and eventually they both said everything that they wanted to.

She left before dawn, dressing in the dark and slipping out; she kissed him as he slept, and left a note, and stepped out into the crisp winter air.

---

Their correspondences became more sporadic, and eventually tapered to a halt. Joel was busy adventuring with his newly reclaimed family, and Bonnie had no urge to interrupt that adventuring. His life had become what it was meant to be, and she had no real place in it.

But she was fine with that. He had been good and kind to her when she needed it most, and she had been the same to him. She only missed their not-quite-relationship sometimes, mostly on those nights where the emptiness was a little too apparent.

She never expected to hear from him again.

When he showed up on her doorstep three days before Christmas, she was almost afraid that something terrible had happened; that he was once again in that lonely place she had found him in so long ago.

"I have something for you," he said, and the smile he was trying to hide came to the surface.

Bonnie stepped aside so that he could come in out of the cold. One thing she always had liked was that they had long since dropped the pleasantries. "You don't have to get me anything, Joel."

"I had to get you this." He stepped in, shaking the snow out of his hair, then pulled out a piece of paper and offered it.

She took it, raising an eyebrow, and opened it. Inside was an address from Arizona. "What is it?"

"Go and find out. I've already booked you a plane ticket."

"Joel..." She was getting a little exasperated.

He took her by the shoulders. "Bonnie, _go_."

It was in his face; in his eyes, in his smile, that she found the answer. And in that heartbeat, she knew what that address meant. She _knew_.

She threw clothes into a suitcase without knowing what they were, got her coat on, grabbed the plane ticket off of Joel and was out the door and headed for her car. She didn't ask him how, or why, or anything. She couldn't have if she wanted to; she couldn't find her voice.

Paused half in and half out of her car, she pulled him in for a long kiss. She hoped that said what she couldn't.

It did. Just before she closed the door, she heard him say, "Good-bye, Bonnie."

---

The dust of well over a decade lay on the black shell, streaked in places like ancient riverbeds long dry. Under the lights of the old warehouse, the black TransAm looked like just another car; old and tired.

It was still the most beautiful thing Bonnie had seen in a very long time.

She made her way over, kneeling and wiping the dust from the scanner. Part of her expected it to come to life; to flash red, then track back and forth. But she knew that it wouldn't... not yet.

She paced around the car, getting up her courage. There was so much to explain... what had happened to Michael, what had happened to Devon, why so much time had passed. So many things she had to acknowledge herself that she knew would hurt. So many things she knew would hurt him.

But she knew one more thing: They had each other.

She opened the driver's side door and slid into the seat. So many years, and it still smelled like Michael Knight inside of the cabin -- so many years, and it felt like yesterday when they were all together. She took a long moment to breathe and remember.

And then she went to work.


End file.
